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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Sweet Miniature Sliders...

For this Weekly Wednesday Treat Day item, we decided to take a rest from the ordinary bars, cakes or cookies. Instead, we thought we would throw in a little whimsy this week with these Sweet Miniature Sliders!

To create these individual guys, we emptied a big box of vanilla wafers and picked out 48 of the best looking ones to act as the buns. We scooped up all of the remaining wafers and crumbs, put them into a sturdy zip-loc bag and smashed them to bits with a heavy rolling pin. To sweeten the crumbs up and to act as a little binder, we tossed them with confectioners' sugar along with a pinch of salt to cut the sweetness.

Into those sweetened crumbs, we added a mixture of bittersweet chocolate and milk that we heated until the chocolate was melted and smooth. After a few strokes with a sturdy wooden spoon, those tan crumbs turned dark and stuck together, creating a sturdy fudge-like mixture. It will seem pretty sticky at first, but letting the chocolate cool for a few minutes will firm the decadent concoction up enough that you can scoop out portions, roll them into balls and squish into a patty shape. This forms the meat portion of the burgers - to create lettuce, we tinted sweetened coconut green and added it on top. Ketchup and mustard come in the form of gel icing - I left off "the cheese", but if you fancy a cheeseburger, use an apricot-flavored fruit leather and cut it into small squares.

The patty and fixin's were then sandwiched in the vanilla wafers that you set aside. We are sesame bun people, so with the help of a little melted butter for glue, we sprinkled a few seeds on top of each assembled burger. These treats were such a blast to make... and I imagine they will certainly start a conversation when served! They were a bit sweet, but even so, they were still tasty little bites and fun to eat!

We have it fairly often around here, but Jeff is always happy to find out when we have a breakfast-for-dinner night. We made pumpkin pancakes last time, but since we had some extra-ripe bananas handy, I decided on these Banana-Oat Pancakes.

With these pancakes, we gave them a heartier texture by increasing the ratio of chewy old-fashioned rolled oats to the flours we used. To add a little tang, we changed up the liquids by using half milk and creamy vanilla yogurt. You'll want to mash the bananas before adding them to the liquid ingredients, but don't seek out to puree them smooth - a little extra texture is a good thing. Once the wet ingredients were stirred into the dry (be sure to keep a light hand and just mix until combined - lumps are good!), we set the batter aside to rest for 10 minutes before dolloping the batter on the griddle. This gives those thick oats a chance to absorb some of the liquid and soften.

After they hit the griddle (or your cooking vessel of choice), leave them be until the tops of the pancakes are covered in bubbles and the very edges look matte instead of the glossy nature of the wet center. Once turned, they should only need an extra minute or so to finish cooking off that raw batter. Since there is just a little brown sugar added, these pancakes would not be very sweet, but using especially ripe bananas, these golden rounds had just enough sweetness that you could forgo a syrup on top. Saying that, it is always hard to resist warm pure maple syrup with pancakes, so we of course drizzled some on top before diving in. Not dense, but not necessarily light as air either, these pancakes had a slight chew from the oats, a mild banana essence and were very filling... good for a chilly weekend morning to keep you going until lunch!

I used brownies as the 'hamburger'---cut out with circle cookie cutters. I also rolled out softened orange Starburst candies for the 'cheese' and used Fluff colored yellow with food coloring for the mustard. Fun Super Bowl party treats!